I really described the film in the best way possible way in my video review, calling it a combination of 13th, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Platoon. Now, to elaborate:
It starts off with a bunch of archival footage from the time of the Vietnam War, emphasizing the protests of black Americans. Muhammad Ali is given particular focus, as he brings up valid points about why he shouldn’t be bombing brown people abroad when it’s white Americans both demanding that and calling him the n-word and beating him here.
Then we meet the main characters. Chadwick Boseman, in flashbacks, plays the leader of a group of five young black soldiers fighting the Viet Cong – soldiers who discover a humongous quantity of gold bars and decide they would rather hide them for their own sake than turn them into the American government that abuses them. The agreement is that in the future, they will come back and collect their riches.
In the present day, the four surviving soldiers head on back to Vietnam, along with the adult son of one of them. They seek their loot, but some Vietnamese rogues also seek that loot, feeling they are entitled to it after the harm America’s imperialism did their country. Some French progressives also covet the gold, feeling it can help undo the effects of their own country’s harmful imperialism on Vietnam and other nations.
As you can tell, there are many characters in the film – yet nobody feels pointless. Spike Lee, as he as a track record of doing, lays bare weaknesses in the characters whom he seems to sympathize most with, while helping us see valid beefs supposed antagonists have. Lee isn’t a perfect filmmaker – he does seem a bit too in love with himself the way certain shots or scenes linger too much. Still, this is a dynamic story, told largely rivetingly.
If you have a Netflix subscription – and who doesn’t these days – this is free for you so what are you waiting for? As exciting a history, sociology, and political science treatise as you’ll find!
Bottom line: Watch it!
Up Next: More “40 Acres and a Mule” (Lee’s production company)
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